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CHIROT ZERO ZINE--ANNOUNCING NEW BLOG

Dear Followers, Friends, fellow Workers:

I have just begun a new blog/zine calledChirot Zero Zine A Heap of Rubble--Anarkeyology of hand eye ear notations---http://chirotzerozine.blogspot.comthe blog is more exusively concerned than this one with presenting essays, reviews (inc. "bad reviews") , Visual Poetry, Sound Poetry, Event Scores, Manifestos, Manifotofestos, rantin' & raving, rock'roll, music all sorts--by myself and others--if you are interested in being a contributor, please feel free to contact me at david.chirot@gmail.comas with this blog, the arts are investigated as a part of rather than apart from the historical, economic, political actualities of yesterday, today, & tomorrowas with al my blogs--contributions in any language are welcome

Free Leonard Peltier

The government under pretext of security and progress, liberated us from our land, resources, culture, dignity and future. They violated every treaty they ever made with us. I use the word “liberated” loosely and sarcastically, in the same vein that I view the use of the words “collateral damage” when they kill innocent men, women and children. They describe people defending their homelands as terrorists, savages and hostiles . . . My words reach out to the non-Indian: Look now before it is too late—see what is being done to others in your name and see what destruction you sanction when you say nothing. --Leonard Peltier, Annual Message January 2004 (Leonard Peltier is now serving 31st year as an internationally recognized Political Prisoner of the United States Government)

VISUAL POETRY/MAIL ART CALLNo Sieges, Tortures, Starvation & SurveillanceGAZA-GUANTANAMO-ABU GHRAIB—THE GLOBE Deadline/Fecha Limite: SinsLimite/ongoing Size: No limit/Sin Limite No Limit on Number of Works sentNo Limit on Number of Times New Works Are SentDocumentation: on my bloghttp://davidbaptistechirot.blogspot.com Addresses: david.chirot@gmail.comDavid Baptiste Chirot740 N 29 #108Milwaukee, WI 53208USA

Miss Universe Visits Guantanamo: 'A Loooot Of Fun!'

Miss Universe Visits Guantanamo: 'A Loooot Of Fun!'

The current 'Miss Universe' Dayana Mendoza (formerly Miss Venezuela) and 'Miss America' Crystal Stewart visited US troops stationed in Guantanamo Bay on March 20th, the New York Times reports. Here's Mendoza's account of the visit from her pageant blog last Friday. She says the trip "was a loooot of fun!"

This week, Guantánamo!!! It was an incredible experience...All the guys from the Army were amazing with us. We visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books. It was very interesting. We took a ride with the Marines around the land to see the division of Gitmo and Cuba while they were informed us with a little bit of history.

The water in Guantánamo Bay is soooo beautiful! It was unbelievable, we were able to enjoy it for at least an hour. We went to the glass beach, and realized the name of it comes from the little pieces of broken glass from hundred of years ago. It is pretty to see all the colors shining with the sun. That day we met a beautiful lady named Rebeca who does wonders with the glasses from the beach. She creates jewelry with it and of course I bought a necklace from her that will remind me of Guantánamo Bay :)I didn't want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful.

Please note you do NOT have to be a Facebook user to read the posts or the discussions there, watch the videos, etc. If you DO want to add to the conversation all you have to do is set up a Facebook ID for yourself, even if you use it for nothing else, and it is very easy to do and you will see a link for that at the top of the page above if you don't have one.

What we are doing on this new page is creating a hub, where people can come together and talk about what we can do to break free of the vicious cycle of swapping mean-spirited Republicans for cowardly Democrats back and forth in what has now become a vain and fruitless charade. The plan is that once this first page hits 10,000 fans (and there are nearly 1,000 already), we will start breaking out into mobilizing pages state by state and congressional district by district.

For those of you who are Greens or associated with some existing "third" party, you are invited and welcome to participate. But what we want to foster is a BASE with allegiance to NO party in particular. Then as more and more people join the conversations on these local mobilizing pages we will finally be in a position to support worthy independent candidates (who might have their own third party affiliations), with a track record of policy activism in the public interest, to emerge from that base, and for that base to rally around as an election approaches.

We bring to this initiative some amazing technology, even on top of the existing and now mature Facebook social media network with 300 million participants of their own. Our own Voices application, for sending real time messages to all your members of Congress, creating your own action pages on any issue you care about and more, is fully integrated into this new resource. And there is much more to come.

Our entire premise since we started doing action pages has been if people were to actually speak out that one of two things would happen. Either 1) our members of Congress would listen and we would get real policy change on the spot, or else 2) they would not listen and this would be a practical and personal demonstration that they needed to be replaced with someone else.

If the events of the last week have demonstrated nothing else it is that we have NO members of Congress we can count on to cast the deciding vote on a progressive issue. Members of the Congressional "Progressive" Caucus swore up and down they would NEVER agree to a health care bill without a strong public option. It was a matter of principle they said. And all they've done since is collapse like a house of greased cards.

And the biggest problem is that this sell out to the insurance companies health care bill is SO unpopular, and forcing it through the way they are, the Democrats are bound to lose large numbers of seats in November. Nobody is predicting that they won't lose a significant number of seats. They might even lose their majorities. Unless we have some alternate INDEPENDENT candidates with substantial support in place all those lost seats will go back to the do nothing Republicans.

That's the choice we reject. Between do nothing Republicans and afraid to do anything Democrats. And please understand we are if anything MORE interested in replacing the intransigent lock step Republicans. In some very "red" districts there may be reasonable conservatives where we can agree on various issues, and let them unseat the Republicans, and THAT would be an improvement from our standpoint.

So please come to the Facebook page, become a fan, post some comments of your own, join the discussion. Bring your ideas and your creativity. And make this new resource what you will it to be.

We will also be building "regular" web pages that will mirror the Facebook network, but again, to have full access to the power of the Facebook network's own connectivity you will need at least a Facebook ID.

It's a brave new world, we will concede that. But there are now resources in place to make possible what progressive organizers in the past could only just dream about . . . instant connectivity for mobilizing literally millions of people. That dream is a reality now, if you will make it so. We sure will.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

Week Ending March 14, 2010: Hendrix Tops Elvis

The Jimi Hendrix Experience'sValleys OfNeptune enters The Billboard 200 at #4, putting the rock legend back in the top five nearly 40 years after he died at the tragically young age of 27. No other artist has cracked the top five this long after his death. Elvis Presleyis in second place. His Elvis: 2nd To None debuted at #3 in October 2003, a little more than 26 years after his death.Hendrix is the second music legend to make the top five posthumously in the past two weeks. Johnny Cash bowed at #3 two weeks ago with American VI: Ain't No Grave. But Cash died less than seven years ago. It's more remarkable for an artist who died four decades ago to make significant chart waves.Valleys Of Neptune is, incredibly, Hendrix's 34th posthumous album to make The Billboard 200.Hendrix was a star for just three years, from June 1967, when he played the Monterey International Pop Festival, to September 1970, when he died in London of a drug overdose. The guitar hero had four top five albums in his lifetime. This is his third top five album since his death. It follows The Cry Of Love, which hit #3 in 1971, and CrashLanding, which reached #5 in 1975.Four of Hendrix's catalog albums re-enter The Billboard 200 this week. 1967's Are You Experienced? bows at #44, followed by 1968's Electric Ladyland at #60, the 1997 compilation First Rays Of The NewRising Sun at #63 and 1968's Axis: Bold As Love at #67.Experienced? first cracked The Billboard 200 on Aug. 26, 1967. It was only the 10th highest new entry of the week (!), opening at an unimpressive #190. The album took 59 weeks to reach its #5 peak in October 1968. This week's debut of Valleys Of Neptune gives Hendrix a nearly 41-1/2 year span of top five albums.

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The purpose of this message is that of informing youwe have started working aiming at the III International Festival of video art, Camagüey 2010. The Festival will take place in Camaguey City, Cuba from 26th to 30th November, 2010.Our Festival allows a chance to present the recient video-art works, the same of young or already consolidated artists. All artists, local or foreign, can participate with no age or sex distinction whatsoever.

If you are interested and you are an indpendent artist, art gallery or art institution representative, a curator, an art critics or anyone close to these areas, it will be a pleasure to count on your participation. We encourage you to prepare a proposal for this Festival III Edition.

The deadline for the participating works will be August 20thof the current year.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Recently I have been working on a small project regrading FIRE in writing--one could look at this, s have many, as the history of the burning of libraries and books sinCe the beginning of recorded history--yet the FIRES i am thinking of are but a few--those of Rimbaud in certain sections of UNE SAISON EN ENFER--those of ArTAUd in various essays in THE THEATER AND ITS DOUBLE--and some examples taken from the book, The Day of St Anthony's Fire by John G. Fuller, and a couple of Situationist Texts--and who knows perhaps a return to the book by bachelard THE PSYCHOANALYSIS OF FIRE-- one might include the history of the car bomb, s recounted in Mike Davis' devastating study BUDA'S WAGON--

which ever way one examines them, one finds over and over again the immense fire power of the State targeted at small bunchs of enclosed, captive, populations in overpopulated urban areas--or in small tribal areas "out in the middle of nowhere."

There are many manuals on line and through history in various forms of print--for the Incendiaries--Les Petroleuses for example--those Communard working and lower class person, primarily women, so brutally depicted in the Good Bourgois presses of the world as crazed, alcholol-ingiated ragged haggard ioften witch-like looking crones who soaked rags in petrol ,lit them and threw them at al the good homes and institutions they could reach with their skinny arms--to set them on fire! gloriously!--And at the same time bringing down upon them a condemnation from the Good Presses of the "advanced nations," that one finds today when raging about "terrorists" daring set light to some building, some structure, some symbol of the Civilized World which must meet with the immediate & massive retaliation of the Civilized World--torture, drones, "shock and awe" bombings, the Prison hells of Gaza, Gitmo and Abu Ghraib among countless others--

The immense phosphorous fires ignited in Gaza and places like Fallujah--are "necessary" to combat a great many among the world's poorest, least technological societies--

In THE CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE--his anyalysis-report on the Paris Commune of 1871- Karl Marx notes this bizarre and righteous inversion of the forces of the State vs those of the People--AND THE USES OF THE MEDIA TO ACCOMPLISH THIS OBSCENE INVERSION:

After drawing a parallel between the actions of the Thiers Government during Bloody Week--in whcih 20-25, 000 citizens were butchered in sthe streets, a number exceeding that of those executed during the Terror of the Revolution-- and the historical events in Rome during the times of Sula and the Two Triumviartes of Rome, Marx writes:

(see the attachements attached for this and the folowing pages from Marx)--

The images here are from recent riots in Paris, from the illustrated press during the Commune and some pieces of my own--

The Long Hot Summers of the 1960's in the USA offered a new look at the power of fire lit by citizens versus that Fire Power of the State--

The relation of Rimbaud's work with the Commune--how the Commune has permeated the language and ideas of Rimbaud's post May 1871 writings--is brilliantly discussed in Kristin Ross's The Emergence of Social Space, Rimbaud and the Commune. On the one hand, a news social space emergences during the Commune, on the other hand, this social space is redrawn literally and figuratively in the reconstructions of Paris afterwards that vanished the sites of the Commune, and in Impressionist Painting, which turned to presenting the "pastoral" landscape spaces of public parks and the new boulevards installed by Haussmann. Effectively, one might say that what is emerging is at the same time submerging, being forced "underground" historically and visually and being in large part "vanished" from cultural memory.

At the same time, this cultural memory of the Commune continues to Return and inspires "later, more terrible workers," as Rimbaud foresaw. During a period like that of the contemporary American situation, the social-cultural work of poetry might be used to keep the return possible , rather than siding with the "covering up" as it were as a form of "vanishing" of the social from the cultural scenes of today. Indeed, poetry and art might be used to re-ignite the fires of struggle against the "disappearance" of millions promulgated by the American State and its allies. If even a few examples "flare up" to signal that the possible is not "impossible," thereis always the possiblity and hope of such events taking place--hence someof the ideas and works at this site.

This week: Asim Qureshi, the executive director of Cageprisoners launches his book Rules of the Game; an article reviewing the new play "Waiting" by Victoria Brittan, about the lives of detainee's wives; a series of Cageprisoners events and the opportunity to raise money by doing a sponsored run or zorb; and topical articles and news stories.

PRESS RELEASE: Launch of 'Rules of the Game' by Asim Qureshi 18 March2010In the aftermath of the 7/7 suicide bombings in London Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that 'The rules of the game have changed'. By this he meant to explain how his government would respond to the attacks, but few people at the time anticipated that counter-terrorism would become synonymous with circumventing the rule of law. It is associated now with 'profiling', 'incommunicado detention', 'rendition' and 'torture'.

ARTICLE: Waiting by Victoria Brittan: detainees' wives get a voice their husbands never had11 March 2010 All the women in my new verbatim play, Waiting, found Britain an oasis of safety. Then 9/11 changed all that.

EVENT: BRITISH 10K RUN - DO YOU WANT TO RUN ALONGSIDE AN EX GUANTANAMO DETAINEE? 11 July 2010Can you run 10K? Do you fancy running alongside ex Guantanamo Bay detainees Do you fancy raising money for Cageprisoners? If the answer is yes to the above questions then Cageprisoners would like you to run the BRITISH 10K run on our behalf.

EVENTS: "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo" – UK Tour Dates 2010 Throughout 2010, former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes and Andy Worthington, journalist and author of The Guantánamo Files, will be touring the UK, showing the new Guantánamo documentary "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo," and attending post-screening Q&A sessions.

ARTICLE: Robert Fisk: Into the terrifying world of Pakistan's 'disappeared' 18 March 2010If you want to know how brutally Pakistan treats its people, you should meet Amina Janjua. An intelligent painter and interior designer, she sits on the vast sofa of her living room in Rawalpindi – a room that somehow accentuates her loneliness – scarf wound tightly round her head, serving tea and biscuits like the middle-class woman she is. And although neither a soldier nor a policeman has ever laid a hand on her, she is a victim of her country's cruel oppression. Because, five years ago, her husband Masood became one of Pakistan's "disappeared"

NEWS: UK can't guarantee allies don't torture detainees18 March 2010 Britain's government can't completely rule out that its allies torture detainees while seeking to tackle the threat from terrorism, according to an official report released Wednesday. http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=31155

NEWS: Pakistanis die in 'US drone raids'17 March 2010Two suspected US drone attacks in northwest Pakistan have killed at least six suspected pro-Taliban fighters, according to intelligence and security officials.http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=31151

NEWS: Habib wins damages from newspaper17 March 2010 An appeal court has ruled that former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib was defamed by a Sydney newspaper.The court has ruled that Mamdouh Habib should get damages from the Daily Telegraph.

NEWS: US rights groups demand release of young Gitmo inmate 15 March 2010 The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Human Rights Watch, and Juvenile Law Center organizations have issued a joint letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, urging the release of Omar Khadr, a Canadian national arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 for allegedly throwing a grenade at a US army officer.

Cageprisoners is a human rights NGO that exists to raise awareness of the plight of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other detainees held and abused as part of the War on Terror. We aim to give a voice to the voiceless.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

How I Fought to Survive Guantánamo By Patrick Barkham

How I Fought to Survive Guantánamo
By Patrick Barkham
For nearly six years, British resident Omar Deghayes was imprisoned in Guantánamo and subjected to such brutal torture that he lost the sight in one eye. But far from being broken, he fought back to retain his dignity and his sanity.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24468.htm

Torture Team Cards

Gleb Kolomiets of Slova journal just put on line my ZERO POEM/POEM ZERO with the Visual Poetry score synched to the Sound Poetry--of the performance--many thanks to Gleb more than i can say and i hope some of you may enjoy this--

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The New Extreme Experimental American Poetry & Arts--Necessity is the Motherfucker of Invention

"As usual, the only symptoms we had were in the language."--Pier Paulo PasoliniTo degenerate as a result of the use of torture, & by its concealment & deception question human dignity & individual rights--

In the first lines of his Introduction to Torture: Cancer of Democracy France and Algeria 1954-62, Pierre Vidal-Naquet asks "Can a great nation, liberal by tradition, allows its institutions, its army, and its system of justice to degenerate over the span of a few years as a result of the use of torture, and by its concealment and deception of such a vital issue call the whole Western concept of human dignity and the rights of the individual into question?"

To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change

In The Peloponnesian War, Book 3, Thucydides states:"To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change. What used to be thought of as a thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward, any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant one was totally unfitted for action; frenzied violence came to be considered an attribute of a real man. "

Necessity is the Mother of InventionThese entries are ongoing found materials with which one works on various projects. They are an Anarkeyology of Site/Sight/Cites in which, by relinking the Military & Art meanings of "avant-garde," are found different ways of investigating separations, Walls, silences, distranslations, forgeries, torture, "Newspeak," censorship and propaganda as elements common to both war and writing/art historically & in the USA & Globally today.

The finding of these materials and the questions they open are, I find, "necessary," as the Formal separations of the American "avant-gardes" from the Military & external/ internal imperialist realities that are among the "symptoms . . . in language" that Pasolini notes "we (have) to go on."

Separations in, of, and by language are "necessary" to Vidal-Naquet's "concealment " of "torture, cancer of democracy," whose "deceptions" erect barriers, Walls, prisons, "Security," Surveillance between not only the torturers and the tortured, Occupiers and the Occupied, but between actions and words, so that a culture conceals itself from itself.

Materials & questions that are "necessary" to examine separations, concealments, deceptions that are "necessary"--and are Hidden in Plain Site/Sight/Cite

"Necessary"--to find among the "fictional" and the "factual," among street debris and the debris of Poetry, Writing & Arts, Street & Protest Arts and Actions, News Reports, Torture Documents , Prisons . . . the" failure to communicate" that haunts the Prison //Security//Surveillance System of Cool Hand Luke's"Boss Keane's Ditch" and daily covering more of the world. These interconnections and relinkings, the symptoms in language, is a work found by what I call "Necessity, the Motherfucker of Invention."

In The Moro Affair, Leonardo Sciascia writes:"Indeed when the truth which had been confined to literature emerged harsh and tragic within the context of everyday life, and could no longer be ignored, it seemed as if it were a product of literature."

This "truth" " is something so "obvious"that it becomes treated as a separation, a "fiction," rather than a "real, true fact."

To work with the "Hidden in Plain Site/Sight/Cite" can in this way be considered a "fiction," compared to the "reality" of a Formal Separation which is "immune to these things."

Sciascia notes the "Hidden in Plain Site/Sight/Cite" in using an expression from Poe's "The Purloined Letter:"

"(W)hat we called the invisibility of the obvious . . . (from Poe's Dupin) . . others have called over-obviousness . . . an obviousness linked to other obviousnesses , all of them conforming to a . . . concept of the clandestine."

This "invisibility" is separated from the "real, true fact," which the account and appearances of events create as the version that is "believed" to have occurred.

Sciascia quotes a dictionary:

"One says: a real true fact. and such like. Real in this case seems to reinforce true, not simply as pleonasm but thus: a real true fact hasn't simply occurred but it has occurred as it is told, as it appeared, as it is believed . . . "

The separation of "what is told, as it appeared, as it is believed" from what is "the invisibility of the obvious" allows for the concealment and deception Vidal-Naquet writes of.

The entries here may be read as the raw materials ofas an examination of these separations, symptons in language, and finding ways to link them in the term common to the military & ar t"avant- garde" in Necessity the Motherfucker of Invention's "New Extreme Experimental American Poetry& Arts.

"Waterboarding"--Brief History of a Word, a Practice

If the word torture, rooted in the Latin for “twist,” means anything (and it means “the deliberate infliction of excruciating physical or mental pain to punish or coerce”), then waterboarding is a means of torture. The predecessor terms for its various forms are water torture, water cure and water treatment.
The early phrase Chinese water torture described a cruel ordeal invented by Asian ancients. The purpose of slowly dripping water on the forehead until each little splash became unbearable was not “to elicit information through harsh interrogation” but to drive the victim mad. That phrase outlived its sadistic practice and is in use today, adopted as a metaphor for “repeated annoyance intended to infuriate.” In a 1991 hostage standoff, President George H. W. Bush decried “the cruel water torture of occasional vague promises.”
The water cure was described as the response by some American soldiers to atrocities by Filipino insurgents after our liberation of the Philippine Islands in the Spanish-American war of 1898. At a Congressional hearing in the spring of 1902, the “cure” was described as water “poured onto his face, down his throat and nose. . . . His suffering must be that of a man who is drowning but who cannot drown.” Mark Twain, writing in the May 1902 issue of the North American Review, deplored “the torturing of Filipinos by the awful ‘water cure’ . . . to make them confess.”
President Theodore Roosevelt disapproved, and in 1902 ordered the dismissal of the United States general in charge; in a letter to a German friend dated July 19, 1902, however, Roosevelt was slightly more understanding: to find out which Filipinos committed outrages, he wrote that “not a few” of our officers and enlisted men “began to use the old Filipino method of mild torture, the water cure. Nobody was seriously damaged, whereas the Filipinos had inflicted incredible tortures upon our own people.” T.R. was careful to add, “Nevertheless, torture is not a thing that we can tolerate.”
To more recent times: in 1953, a U.S. fighter pilot told United Press that North Korean captors gave him the “water treatment” in which “they would bend my head back, put a towel over my face and pour water over the towel. I could not breathe. . . . When I would pass out, they would shake me and begin again.” In 1976, a United Press International reporter wrote that U.S. Navy trainees “were strapped down and water poured into their mouths and noses until they lost consciousness. . . . A Navy spokesman admitted use of the ‘water board’ torture . . . to ‘convince each trainee that he won’t be able to physically resist what an enemy would do to him.’ ” In 1991, the columnist Jack Anderson — confusing the phrase about ancient practice with the modern development — wrote of “the Chinese water board demonstration, one of the most dangerous in the Navy arsenal. Water is then poured over their faces by an instructor to simulate prisoner-of-war treatment.” Without the “Chinese” reference, such “simulated drowning” is the method most often used today to describe the interrogation of three suspected terrorists, about which the C.I.A. director recently testified.
The earliest use of the phrase water boarding I can find is in an article about the interrogation of the suspected terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (often awarded the bogus title “9/11 mastermind”). It was posted on the Web site of The New York Times on May 12, 2004, by James Risen, David Johnston and Neil Lewis, published in The Times and carried worldwide on the A.P. wire the next day: “C.I.A. interrogators used graduated levels of force, including a technique known as ‘water boarding,’ in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.”

PalFest 2009 Photo Stream--Latest Updates Added

Palfest 09: "to confront the culture of power with the power of culture"

Monday, May 25, 2009
Palfest 09: Culture vs. Power
The Guardian reports today that armed Israeli police last night tried to halt the opening night of the Palestinian Festival of Literature, organised by Ahdaf Soueif, when they ordered a Palestinian theatre in East Jerusalem to close, claiming that the festival - which is funded by the British Council and UNESCO - had received funding from the Palestinian Authority.
Soueif writes on Palfest's author blog http://www.palfest.org/authorsblog.html
(referring to a famous phrase of Edward Said's):
Today, my friends, we saw the clearest example of our mission: to confront the culture of power with the power of culture.
Authority.
Soueif writes on Palfest's author blog (referring to a famous phrase of Edward Said's):

Today, my friends, we saw the clearest example of our mission: to confront the culture of power with the power of culture.

Despite attempts to prevent the sharing and transmission of culture, Palfest is using all the communications tools at its disposal to reach out -- for videos, photos, blogs and other Palfest updates go here. Here's a video from the opening night:

PALFEST 2009 POSTER

TAKE ACTION--HELP GAZA

Israeli forces ended their offensive against Hamas in Gaza on Saturday, 17 January, following the declaration of ceasefires by Hamas and Israel.

Highlighted below are some of the main buildings identified as destroyed or damaged in Gaza City and the surrounding area as of 16 January, when this latest satellite image was taken.

The image, taken for Unosat at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, has helped researchers identify at least 566 destroyed or damaged buildings.

The map below shows the main areas attacked in the three weeks of violence.

Palestinian medical sources say more than 1,010 Palestinians were killed in the violence, which began on 27 December 2008. Israel says 13 Israelis died, including 10 soldiers in the campaign and three civilians killed as a result of rocket fire from Gaza.

NO MORE BLANK CHECK FOR ISRAEL! Plz Sign..

cpdweb.org — Campaign for Peace and Democracy sign-on statement. massive military attacks on Gaza, Israel has again engaged in actions contrary to morality, international law, the cause of peace, and to the long-term best interests of the people of Israel. And, once again, the United States government has been the enabler of Israeli actions: [To sign:-http://www.cpdweb.org/statements/1010/stmt.html

Urgent action by the UN General Assembly is warranted and possible.

Israeli impunity must be ended by the collective action of the world community - Plz sign

Roberto Bolano Paris 2001--Homage

Georg Grosz---Dada Death

Waiting for the GuardsWaiting for the Guards highlights interrogation techniques used in the 'war on terror'. The film was made using members of the extreme performance artist troupe who enacted the interrogation scenes for real. The film demonstrates the so called Stress Position and is the first in a series of films focusing on different 'enhanced interrogation' techniques. For now the film is an exclusive for the web, before a theatrical release in independent UK cinemas in early 2008. We believe that the film is a great introduction to the unsubscribe movement, so we ask you to get the movie out there, in any way you can. The more people who will see it, the more people will be compelled to unsubscribe.

Cinema of Catharsis

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Hugo Ball

Anarkeyology of Vision: from Paul Virilio Forward to his "Negative Horizon"

The field of vision always seemed to me comparable to what the ground is for archeological exploration. To see is to be lying in wait for what may spring up from the ground, nameless; for what presents no interest whatsoever, what is silent will speak, what is closed is going to open, it is always the trivial that is productive, and so this constant interest in the incidental, in the margins of whatever sort, that is, in the void and absence.

Lawmakers and government investigators are examining deaths of immigrants who die while in custody as immigration detention system swells to meet demands for stricter enforcement of immigration laws; family members and advocates have difficulty getting information about those who die in custody of immigrant detention, patchwork of federal, private and local facilities; new Immigration and Customs Enforcement report finds that 62 immigrants have died in custody since 2004; immigration officials ...

Edwin Bulus, who fled Nigeria after members of family were jailed for allegedly plotting coup against military regime, has been detained by Immigration and Naturalization Service since arriving at Kennedy International Airport in May 1995, and his treatment has sometimes been harsh; is accused by Federal Government of entering country with false documents, and has since been denied parole while request for asylum is pending; asylum advocates describe handling of case by immigration service as K...